1 August 2024
The city of Paris (and Lille, Nanterre, St.-Denis, etc.) put on a fantastic show for the 2024 Olympics. I went to Paris already quite enamored with the city from previous visits dating back to 1997, and came away even more in love with France. The happy, playful, fun vibe of every Olympic event; the excellent volunteers and welcoming hosts; the brilliance and world-class fan experience in all of the stadiums just made this great city seem even greater.
All that positivity aside, swimming around Paris can be an exercise in frustration due to the crowds and the (worse than even London) inability of my fellow swimming patrons to correctly sort themselves into the right lanes for their swimming ability. I did, however, have two magical experiences, the first at Piscine Alice Milliat in the suburb city of Villeneuve-la-Garenne:
(click on gallery above for larger pictures)
This is a 50 meter pool that is half indoors and half outdoors. I gather that they sometimes have it setup so you can swim from inside to outside, but at the 9:30am opening on this Thursday morning, the bulkhead was setup to create two, 25-meter courses. Thankfully for me, the vast majority of the sun-seeking French swimmers went outside, so that I had my own lane to do an actual workout, the core of which was one of my favorite sets, the "Hackett 200 pace set," which I did fly (on rounds 1 to 3) and IM on the last round. It was the only real workout I got across the seven new pools I swam in that week, an absolute treat in the midst of a vacation that seemed like a never-ending series of treats.
To top it off, the ~25 minute walk from the Saint-Denis RER station featured two serene crossings of the Seine, a brief jaunt across L'Île-Saint-Denis, peaceful parks and a sign that made me feel like Villeneuve La Garenne is my French spiritual home: how can you not love a community that promotes itself as active and sporty?
(click on gallery above for larger pictures)
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